What is Topics?
The Privacy Sandbox provides web technologies that preserve people’s privacy online and give companies and developers the tools to build thriving digital businesses, which keeps the web open and accessible to everyone.
One of the Privacy Sandbox proposals that is being tested in Chrome is called Topics. As browsers phase out third-party cookies, advertisers need new ways of reaching customers with relevant ads, and Topics proposes a new, privacy-preserving way of doing just that.
With the Topics API, a user’s browser would infer topics (such as "Country Music," "Make-Up & Cosmetics," or "Vegetarian Cuisine") for a user based on their browsing activity during a period of time known as an epoch, currently proposed to be one week. The topic selected for each epoch would be randomly selected from the user's top five topics for that time period.
How AdSense serves ads with Topics
When available, Ad Manager/AdSense tags will retrieve topics from the Topics API and pass those in bid requests. Publishers don’t need to do anything explicitly to be a part of Topics API testing. AdSense plans to sample a small percentage of ad requests across all publishers. If desired, publishers can choose to opt out of Topics.
AdSense will begin initial testing for Topics globally on ad requests for a small percentage of traffic. This initial test is to validate that our systems are operating as designed and there is no publisher revenue or performance impact expected.
Blocking controls and Topics
We're still working on the AdSense product plans and we welcome publisher feedback on the types of controls that would be helpful. If desired, publishers can choose to opt out of Topics.
Opting out of the Topics
If you want to opt out of Chrome's Topics, use Chrome’s Permissions-Policy.
